Dour-faced Library-dwellers

Setting: the Library. I'm working fastidiously at my laptop at something or other, when a friend trots in and over to my table for a quick hello. We exchange hushed greetings, and then, from a near-by table, I get "it." The glare. Our chatter has disturbed the sacred concentration of some cloistered scholar. I reckon he don't care to join in our visitation, neither.

I guess the library is just the place to go if you are of the dour-faced variety. You can cooperate in pristine silence with other folks who relish their sobriety like a fancy-wrapped present that's never been opened.

What pains me is that I've delivered a glare or two in my time. OK, more than two, but who's counting? I'm reformed. I've sworn off the glaring for today at least.